In the last round of the 44th world chess Olympiad in Chennai, India – Singapore Open team played against Sweden.

The final round started at 10am in the morning, and board pairings were available only past midnight. With very little time to prepare, we tried our best to be ready for the Swedes.

The match was rough. On the 3rd board, Qianyun did not manage to navigate through the tricky order of moves offered by her opponent, GM Westerberg – and got under pressure. Soon after, she missed a nice geometrical trick and lost an exchange. Opponent was merciless and that was how Sweden opened the score.

Before the match we put our hopes on the 2nd and 4th boards, where we had white pieces and expected 2 Kings Indians. Good preparation gave us an opening advantage on those 2 boards, but as usual in KID, evaluation of the engine is less important than good understanding of the complex middlegame.

In both games our GM opponents slowly outplayed us. While Jayden Wong could escape for a draw with perpetual check against Emmanuel Berg, Siddharth Jagadeesh was not so lucky. GM Tiger Hillarp Persson played a brilliant and instructive game on positional sacrifice for the exchange. Painful loss, but a great lesson for Siddharth.

On 1st board Tin Jingyao got under unpleasant pressure in the Reti Opening. GM Nils Grandelius was very close to squeeze a win on several occasions, but with usual sturdiness, Jingyao did not crack under pressure and saved a draw.

Final score: Sweden 3-1 Singapore

Over at the Women’s Squad – Singapore was paired against Peru. The team spirit was good and we knew that a win would lift us to cloud nine. However, our hopes were not fulfilled – Both of our Black games suffered losses.

Anjela faced Grandmaster Cori and could not defend against her opponent’s attack.
Eunice had a difficult position out of the opening and her tactically strong opponent used an opportunity to start a decisive attack.

Emma had a long fight and secured a draw. Fang Kun played a nice game. She was winning an exchange out of a kingside attack and converted it safely.

On the plus side we have two direct titles (Eunice is eligible for WFM and Fang Kun, WCM), many won rating points and gained invaluable experience for our younger players.
Final score: Peru 2.5 – 1.5 Singapore

𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟐 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐎𝐥𝐲𝐦𝐩𝐢𝐚𝐝

After a 2-week gauntlet in India and battling some of the world’s finest, the Singapore contingents’ placements are as follows:

OPEN TEAM
Rank 65th out of 188 Teams
WOMEN TEAM
Rank 55th out of 162 Teams

𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞

Shout-out and huge thanks to Anitha Jagadeesh and Joni Siah for acting as chaperones for our Teams throughout the Olympiad! They took care of administration and looked after the players, ensuring that they could fight their hardest and play their best everyday.

Well done to our players who gave their all – We are very proud of your achievements! Let us continue to train hard, and we will surely come back stronger in the next event!